DPD in a CIBIL Report: How to Read the 36-Month Payment Grid

DPD is days past due — the number of days a payment was overdue at each month-end, printed as a rolling 36-month grid against every account in a CIBIL report. Read it from the most recent month backwards, treat `XXX` as unknown rather than clean, and judge recency and run length before you count delinquent months.

Key facts

• The grid runs to three years. TransUnion CIBIL describes the account section as carrying "a month on month record of up to 3 years of your payments" (TransUnion CIBIL, How to read your CIBIL report). Anything older than 36 months is not in the grid, whatever the score implies.
• YuSight cites 100% of figures with one-click source verification, and the Repayment Tracker lines each account's DPD grid up against the bank statement debits for the same months — so a 000 that has no matching debit gets caught.
• DPD maps to a regulatory ladder, not a bureau one. SMA-0 is overdue up to 30 days, SMA-1 more than 30 and up to 60, SMA-2 more than 60 and up to 90; past 90 the account is an NPA (RBI, Master Circular on Income Recognition, Asset Classification and Provisioning, 1 April 2023).
• Classification is a day-end event with a fixed calendar. "Classification of borrower accounts as SMA as well as NPA shall be done as part of day-end process for the relevant date" — a 31 March due date becomes SMA-1 on 30 April, SMA-2 on 30 May and NPA on 29 June if it stays overdue (RBI, IRAC clarifications, 12 November 2021).
• The market average is low, so a single bad grid is an outlier, not a trend. Balance-level 90+ DPD at December 2025 was 1.1% on personal loans, 1.9% on credit cards and 0.7% on home loans (TransUnion CIBIL Credit Market Indicator, March 2026).

What is the 36-month payment grid, and how is it laid out?

Each account block in the report carries a payment history strip: one cell per month, labelled with month and year, for up to 36 months. In CIBIL's consumer layout the most recent month sits at the left-hand end of the row and the strip runs backwards in time from there.

Three things about the cell values that analysts routinely get wrong:

• Each cell is a month-end snapshot, not a maximum. A borrower who was 25 days late on the 20th and paid on the 25th can show 000 for that month. The grid understates intra-month stress by design.
• The DPD figure is per account, not per borrower. A borrower can be 000 on the home loan and 060 on a credit card in the same month. Read every row for the same month before concluding anything.
• The strip depends on the lender filing. Members report as at the 15th and last day of each month, submit within seven calendar days, and the CIC ingests within five (RBI, Credit Information Reporting Directions, 2025). The most recent one or two cells can therefore be blank or stale in a legitimately filed report.

What do STD, SMA, SUB, DBT, LSS and XXX mean in the DPD grid?

Two kinds of value appear in the same strip: a numeric days-past-due count, and an asset-classification code. CIBIL's own definitions:

Source for the code definitions: TransUnion CIBIL, How to read your CIBIL report; asset-classification definitions from the RBI IRAC Master Circular.

The trap in `STD`. A cell reading STD means the account is a standard asset — which under RBI norms means it has not crossed 90 days. It does not mean the payment was on time. An account can be STD in the classification column and 075 in the DPD column for the same month. If your grid shows codes rather than numbers, you have lost resolution, not gained comfort.

How do DPD buckets map to SMA classification under RBI norms?

The mapping differs for term loans and for revolving facilities, and mixing the two is a common error when a borrower has both a term loan and an overdraft.

For revolving facilities the RBI test is not "did the EMI arrive" but whether the "outstanding balance remains continuously in excess of the sanctioned limit or drawing power, whichever is lower" for the relevant period (RBI IRAC Master Circular, para 8.2). This is why a cash credit account can run at 99% utilisation for three years and never show a single non-zero DPD cell — the DPD grid is not measuring the thing that is wrong with it. That reading belongs with drawing power and the stock statement, not with the bureau grid.

The day-end rule explains the jumps. Because classification "shall be done as part of day-end process for the relevant date", a DPD cell can go from 000 to 031 between two month-ends with nothing in between — the account was overdue the whole time, and only crossed a band boundary in the second month (RBI, 12 November 2021). Upgrades are slower than downgrades: an NPA "may be upgraded as 'standard' asset only if entire arrears of interest and principal are paid".

Worked example: two grids, six delinquent months each, two different answers

Two applicants for a ₹15,00,000 unsecured business loan. CIR pulled 20 August 2026, data as at the fortnight ended 31 July 2026. Both have exactly six delinquent months in 36 on their primary term loan. Constructed examples, not real borrowers.

Borrower A — Kavitha Ranganathan. Term loan, Bank A, opened Feb 2021, EMI ₹22,000.

Plus three isolated 030 cells in Sep 2023, Feb 2024 and Mar 2024. Total delinquent months: 6. Worst DPD: 060. Most recent delinquency: March 2024 — 29 months ago.

Borrower B — Suresh Iyer. Term loan, NBFC B, opened Jan 2023, EMI ₹24,500.

Total delinquent months: 6. Worst DPD: 061. Most recent delinquency: July 2026 — current.

Step 1 — count, which is the metric that fails. A: 6 ÷ 36 = 16.7% delinquent months B: 6 ÷ 36 = 16.7% delinquent months Identical. Any policy rule written as "no more than X delinquent months in 36" passes or fails both together.

Step 2 — weight by recency. Delinquent months in the last 12: A: 0 B: 6 (Nov 2025, Jan, Mar, May, Jun, Jul 2026)

Step 3 — read the trajectory. B's last four reported cells: 029, 030, 031, 061. Arrears are lengthening month on month. Under the RBI ladder, 061 at 31 July 2026 puts the account in SMA-2 territory, one 30-day step from NPA. A's worst cell was 29 months ago and the 24 months since are unbroken 000.

Step 4 — clearance behaviour. A's Dec 2023 060 fell to 030 and then to 000: the borrower cured and stayed cured. B's cells return to 000 in Dec 2025, Feb 2026 and Apr 2026, then relapse. Curing and relapsing on a monthly cycle is not a payment problem, it is a cash-cycle problem — the money arrives, but late, every time.

Step 5 — the judgements.

• Borrower A: a two-quarter stress event in FY2023-24, fully cured, followed by 24 clean months. Ask what happened in late 2023 and confirm it against the bank statements. The grid supports a sanction. Note the event in the memo and move on.
• Borrower B: live, escalating, current-period delinquency at 61 days on the primary term loan. This is not a history question, it is a today question. The file needs the current outstanding, the arrears figure as of the pull date, a re-pull before committee, and a look at whether the same months are delinquent across every one of B's accounts.

Same count. Opposite decisions. This is the reason a repayment track record has to be read as a pattern rather than a total.

How do you tell a systemic problem from a one-off?

Lay every account's grid for the same 36 months on top of one another and read down the columns rather than across the rows.

• All accounts delinquent in the same two or three months, then all clean. An income event — a job change, a receivable that landed late, a medical episode. Ask for the explanation and the bank statement for those months. Usually financeable.
• One account delinquent while every other account is clean. A dispute, a failed mandate, a card the borrower stopped using, or a genuine unwillingness to pay one specific lender. Find out which. A mandate failure is an operational fact; refusing to pay one lender is a character fact.
• Delinquency rotating between accounts month by month. The borrower is choosing which lender to pay each month. That is a cash shortfall being managed by rationing, and it precedes a multi-account default.
• Delinquency starting on unsecured and spreading to secured. The standard sequence. Borrowers protect the home loan last. Once the housing loan grid breaks, the unsecured book is already gone.

The column read is also the fastest way to spot an XXX cluster. If three accounts all show XXX for the same recent month, that is a reporting cycle artefact. If one account shows XXX for the last six months while the others report normally, that row has stopped being updated and needs a direct confirmation from the lender.

What breaks a DPD read?

1. Counting instead of patterning. Covered above. A total delinquency count over 36 months discards recency, trajectory and clearance behaviour — the three things that actually predict.

2. `XXX` treated as `000`. No data reported is not paid on time. Where the recent cells are XXX, establish whether the file is late or the account has moved.

3. Reading the classification code and ignoring the number. STD covers everything from zero to 89 days.

4. Grids that reset. Restructuring, a change of reporting member after a portfolio sale, or an account being re-reported under a new account number can produce a clean 36-month strip on a facility with a bad history. A term loan opened in 2019 with only 11 months of grid is a question.

5. Ignoring the guarantor rows. A guaranteed account's grid is a live obligation forecast, not background. Read it with the same weight as the borrower's own — the point made in detail in the line-by-line CIBIL report walkthrough.

6. Not reconciling against bank statements. A 000 cell means the lender reported no arrears. The bank statement tells you whether an EMI actually left the account, and on which date. Where the two disagree, the reconciliation finds the debt only one source knows about.

FAQ

What is DPD in a CIBIL report?

DPD stands for days past due. It is the number of days a payment on that account was overdue as at each month-end, shown as a month-by-month strip covering up to the last three years.

What do XXX and STD mean in the DPD grid?

XXX means the lender did not report anything for that month, so the behaviour is unknown. STD means the account is a standard asset, which only tells you it has not crossed 90 days past due — it can still be badly late.

How many months of DPD history does a bureau show?

CIBIL shows a month-on-month payment record covering up to three years, so 36 cells per account. Behaviour older than that is not visible in the grid even though it may still influence the score.

Is a 30-day DPD serious?

By itself, once, three years ago, no. In the most recent month, on a term loan, alongside other accounts also slipping, yes. Recency and direction of travel matter far more than the size of any single cell.

How does DPD map to SMA classification?

For term loans, 1–30 days overdue is SMA-0, 31–60 days is SMA-1 and 61–90 days is SMA-2; past 90 days the account becomes an NPA. For cash credit and overdraft accounts the same day counts apply, but to continuous excess over the sanctioned limit or drawing power rather than to a missed instalment.

Can an account show zero DPD and still be in trouble?

Yes, and the classic case is a cash credit line running at 98% utilisation every month. Nothing is overdue, so nothing shows in the grid, but the borrower has a permanent working capital gap being carried at short-term rates.

Why did DPD jump from 000 straight to 031?

Because classification happens in the day-end process for a specific calendar date. The account was overdue throughout, and simply crossed the 30-day boundary between one month-end snapshot and the next.

Does the borrower get told when a DPD is reported?

Yes. Lenders are required to send an SMS or email alert to the customer when they submit information about a default or days past due to a credit information company.

Key takeaways

• Read the grid from the most recent month backwards. Recency beats severity in almost every case.
• Six delinquent months clustered 29 months ago and six clustered in the last year are the same count and a different borrower.
• XXX is unknown, STD is anything under 90 days, and a month-end cell can hide intra-month arrears.
• Read down the columns across all accounts. Simultaneous slippage is an income event; rotating slippage is rationing.
• The DPD grid cannot see revolving-limit stress. For cash credit, read utilisation and drawing power instead.

Run one borrower through the analyzer — bring a real CIR and see every account's 36-month grid lined up against the bank statement debits for the same months.

Related: the full CIBIL report walkthrough for underwriters, the DPD grid on the commercial CIR, what CMR does with 36 months of behaviour, and turning a repayment record into a judgement.